Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2009, Page 38

Þóra Pétursdóttir
have the public person and identity,
which bases itself on alliances and rela-
tions and is therefore, as argued by
Strathem (1988) and Gell (1998), “dis-
tributed” into, or “extended” to, mobile
and immortal material actors (e.g. through
gift exchange), often of exclusive and
recognizable character, and whose united
display during the funeral was a socially
vital act. On the other hand you have the
local and private identity, which, although
based on interactions and relations with
different elements, was not public or dis-
tributed, and therefore did not have the
same need for visible re-membering or
recognition.
In his article “Mementoes as
Transitional Objects in Human
Displacement” David Parkin (1999) dis-
cusses the signifícance of small and mun-
dane things in cases of human displace-
ment. He has registered that under condi-
tions of flight or immediate departure
people do not just grab what they abso-
lutely need for subsistence “.. .but also, if
they can, articles of sentimental value
which both inscribe and are inscribed by
their own memories of self and person-
hood” (Parkin 1999: 304). So, when faced
with total dispossession people hold on to
their precluded identity and cultural
knowledge by “...merging it in the mate-
riality of concrete objects...” from where
it may be retrieved when the circum-
stances allow (Parkin 1999: 318). Without
proclaiming that the settlers of Iceland
were refugees, although written sources
would in some instances allow it, Parkin’s
ideas may nevertheless be relevant when
discussing the earliest settlement of
Iceland. Objects brought from one place
to another may thus be seen as material
mementoes, and means to stabilize and
contain individual and collective identity.
Also, from what we know of people’s
belief and Nordic mythology through
written sources, death was not considered
a final end, but rather the beginning of a
joumey into a new existence, and grave
goods are often perceived of as symbolic
expressions of this. However, if death
was conceived as transition or displace-
ment, could the mundane artefacts of
everyday life, and the small personal
items carried in one’s belt, have served as
biographical (Morin 1969; Hoskins 1998)
or transitional objects (Parkin 1999)
merging mementoes of personal identity
or relations across the threshold of
death?
Only rarely are grave goods said to
appear unused. More often things are
described as “old and wom”, like the
whetstone and knife from Stóri-Klofí
(Þórðarson 1936), or otherwise bear signs
of long use, as for example the fíxed
comb from Hrólfsstaðir (Kristinsdóttir
1998), the sooty soap stone cauldron
from Eyrarteigur (Kristjánsdóttir 1996,
1998) and the modified “weight-pearl”
from Brimnes (Bruun and Jónsson 1910).
These items bear the visual imprints of
their long life in people’s service, which
gives us reason to believe that their story
or identity is not told by our classifica-
tion and recognition of them as “a comb”,
“a knife” or “a pebble”. The same is tme
about artefacts such as the spear and axe
from the grave at Kaldárhöfði (Eldjám
1948, 25-44 (see fígure 4)) and the axe
from Straumur (Eldjárn 2000, 221-223),
which through their unusual smallness
also bear a physically recognizable rela-
tion to the young persons they accompa-
ny. Rather, it is only when we acknowl-
edge the person-thing relation displayed
as real and valid that we can start to infer
their entangled life histories and how
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